Happiness and Income

[dexters]

I've been running a decent game recently, having eliminated the Ottomans and Askia, I was pretty much alone on my continent (in a continents game)

When I discovered the other continent, I found Bismarck dominant. My cities were asking for all the luxuries on that continent and I felt like it was time to intervene.

A number of things was happening in parallel.

I discovered an island with 3 CS, and a fur resource. I conquered one to become auto-ally with a maritime state. And settled on the fur resource. +2 cities.

Then I launched my campaign against Germany by first knocking out Kuala Lampur, with a free sugar resource (i didn't have this). Then everything just collapsed.

I attacked Germany and took the nearby city of Essen easily. Germany obviously had a large military and it wasn't a done deal. But before I can even consider anythign else, several things happened.

Happiness went from +9 to -5
Gold went from +30 to -105

This completely crippled my economy and I had no reserves to keep my allies happy and they are slowly peeling off as their contracts are up.

What's wrong here, AND why is the happiness and gold model so opaque. This is what I don't quite like about CiV is a lot of your actions have consequences you can't forsee.

And things like the see-saw happiness swings and gold going from +100 before GA to below 30 after GA can get really frustrating. I'd like a better REPORT and accounting of my expenses and factors going into unhappiness.


Mouse over tells me how much happiness/unhappiness i have from each category but doesn't tell me other factors i'd like to know.

Like what would cause me to go from +9 to -5 happiness. Same with gold.

 

[flyingbunnys]

Did you take the cities as a puppet state or annex them. If you annexed the city each population of that city causes unhappyness.

 

[dexters]

I always puppet conquered cities.

One consideration is Esson had so many improvements that wasn't lost it added a whole bunch of expenses to me. But i've never seen income swing 150~ gold in a few turns.


Edit: on a side-note is there any way to see unhappiness each city is generating?

 

[Ahriman]

Happiness is very transparent. Not quite sure what your problem is here.

You got a 14 point happiness swing from gaining an extra city and an extra 12 population (members of that city or growth of other cities), or from losing a luxury (pillaged, or a diplo deal ended?).

Unhappiness comes from cities and population. Happy comes from buildings, policies, wonders and luxuries.

Your gold output went way down because you left golden age.

 

[dexters]

pop 12 city = 12 extra unhappiness?

As for gold income, I don't believe I left GA, i'll reload and check.

 

[Ahriman]

pop 12 city = 12 extra unhappiness?

14; each city has 2 unhappiness, each population has 1.

I think its impossible that you could drop massively from gold income in a single turn except from:
a) Leaving golden age or
b) Having large numbers of trade routes cut (especially having your capital blockaded, if it has a harbor connected to other harbors).

 

[Spatzimaus]

What's wrong here, AND why is the happiness and gold model so opaque.

There's nothing wrong, most of what you described (at least the happiness part) makes sense.

Unhappiness is directly proportional to population, with an extra amount tacked on for number of cities. But note that CONQUERED cities, before you build a Courthouse, have basically double the penalty of a normal city. So if your newly-acquired city has a large population then your happiness will take a huge hit. In the early game, when you're grabbing a lot of low-size cities, this isn't too bad. But in later eras, when you're conquering some huge cities, it can be crippling if you don't prepare for it. When you take a city (assuming you don't/can't raze it), you MUST immediately rush-build a Colosseum, for instance, and switch the city to all-production mode until the Courthouse is done. Depending on which civ you are, other +happy buildings can help as well (like the Burial Tomb for Egypt or the Satrap's Court for Persia), but Germany doesn't have that.

You don't tend to notice this when you're founding a new city, since it starts at size 1 and you'll be building happiness structures as it grows. And since new cities are often founded to grab more luxury resources, many cities pay for themselves in terms of happiness. But conquered cities unless they provide a new luxury, are always a massive and immediate drain on happiness. In theory, this is supposed to limit warmongering, since you'd quickly hit the point where you couldn't handle any new cities. (In practice, there's little reason to care about unhappiness, and little reason not to raze-and-refound until the very endgame.)

If you mouse-over the happiness number at the top of your screen, you'll see the exact breakdown. Note two things:
> The number of unhappiness for "number of conquered cities" and "population in conquered cities".
> The sheer numbers involved. That +9 you had before was probably something like +100 for positive factors balancing -91 for negative ones. So while +9 sounds big at first, you're really living on the margin; it doesn't take much to shift it the other way.

As for the money, if you're invading another continent, you REALLY need to rush a Harbor in the first city to get there. Connecting the new cities to your capital through a trade route makes a HUGE difference in money (1.25 gpt per population point in the city, if I remember right). It'll take a turn for the extra money to kick in, but it'll quickly pay for the rush costs.
That being said, the only way I can think of to go from +30 to -105 is for a Golden Age to end. No amount of city improvements and such can explain that sort of discrepancy. I suppose you could get that sort of drop if you changed all of your cities from Balanced to Emphasize Production at once or something, though. Or if your enemy blockades a few key cities with his leftover caravels, in a game where you're already living on a few continents.

One other thing to check was, when you conquered this city, did you grab all the nearby Workers? A surprise war against an AI will often result in a few captured workers, but they cost just as much in maintenance as military units do. In later eras, upkeep often runs at about 6gpt per unit (well, 12 per 2 units, it always goes in pairs), so capturing a few unnecessary workers can cripple your economy if you're not careful. In Civ4 you'd always grab these guys before they got away, but in Civ5 it's often better to let them flee (and so cripple HIS economy).